


Pyrrhic

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worlds are one again, but talking to Kazuma reminds Nasch of how much he really lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyrrhic

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the infamous season 6 fake summary spoilers.

Time passes slowly now, a fact that has Nasch chuckling to himself sometimes, because his last moments with  _him_  had gone by in such a flash he wonders if the universe was conspiring against him to make him think it had never happened.

But it had; he remembers everything, every detail – every time  _he_ whispered _Shark_ , every time  _his_  balled-up fists pounded fruitlessly against Nasch’s chest, every painfully blissful time  _his_  fingers had brushed his gems; blissful because he could  _feel_  how much the other cared for him (and it mirrored his own feelings), and painful because he knew he would never have the opportunity to experience that love again.

“Nasch?”

Durbe’s voice is soft, hesitant, and Nasch doesn’t need to turn around to know that Mizael is with him. They’re spending a lot more time together now – well, they do have eternity to live through and nothing much to do but relive old memories and wish that there was something in the universe they had left to fight for.

Life in this world gets boring after a while when you spend it by yourself.

“What is it?”

“Someone’s here to see you.” Mizael’s voice has lost some of the arrogant edge it once carried. That’s all right. Nasch’s has too.

Nasch turns from the window in time to see a burly human man ascend the last stair into the palace, looking winded.

“Sorry, Lord Nasch,” he wheezes, straightening up. “I think you should fire whoever designed that staircase.”

Nasch wonders if this is what  _he_ will look like in twenty years or so – a strong jaw, stocky build, neatly trimmed facial hair. The silly grin is the same, and so is the bright innocence in his eyes; Nasch wonders how anyone trapped in the Astral World for so long had managed to keep so optimistic.

_Kattobingu_ , he thinks wryly.

“Durbe, Mizael,” he says, gesturing vaguely, “I’d like to be alone with this man for a little while.”

Mizael touches Durbe’s elbow and as Durbe looks up at him, they vanish into a portal together.

Nasch studies the man again for a moment and gestures for him to join him. “You’re Kazuma, aren’t you? His father.”

Kazuma nods and joins him at the window. The worlds are still trying to rebuild themselves; the ocean is restored, but the sky is still a swirling black and red haze. Time will fix it, Nasch thinks, and his eyes drop at the thought of the word.

_Time_.

“I never had enough time when it mattered,” he mutters. “And now that I’m alone it’s all I have.”

Kazuma is silent for a moment; he seems to be mulling over what he wants to say that won’t get him thrown out of Nasch’s palace. Not that Nasch wants to throw him out. Here is one tangible piece of proof that  _he_ existed, that  _he_ still exists.

“You’re not alone,” he says finally. “You have your comrades, your friends. You have your sister.”

Nasch knows that. It’s not what he means.

“But there’s still a piece of your heart that’s missing, isn’t that right, Ryoga?”

“I’m Nasch. And I’m a Barian. We have no hearts.”

Kazuma smiles and steps closer to him, prodding a finger into his chest to the left of his crest. Nasch is pretty sure if Kazuma were anyone else, he’d be tossing him back down the stairs right now. But he just looks at him.

“You know better than that, Ryoga.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Kazuma ignores him. “The heart doesn’t control emotions, you know.” He takes his finger off Nasch’s chest and taps the side of Nasch’s head with it. “Your brain does. But the heart can still  _feel_  emotions. That flutter when something happy happens to you, that constriction when you’re lonely and sad. He made you feel these things, didn’t he?”

Nasch’s hands clench against his will and he  _remembers_.

He remembers having to pry  _his_  arms from around his waist, pushing him away, thanking whatever sadistic god or twist of fate that put him in this position in the first place for the Barian body’s lack of tear ducts.

He remembers  _his_ screams, wails, pleadings, and nothing could be done because  _his_  destiny had been fulfilled, and so had his, and destiny dictated that they could never be together again.

He remembers his screams, wails, and pleadings in his own head  _please don’t make me do this; haven’t I given enough? Haven’t I lost enough? Can’t I have… just one thing_?

But  _his_ place isn’t in the Barian World, nor the Astral World, nor the combined world that  _he_  had wished for when he held the Numeron Code and rewrote the fabric of the universe.

_His_ place is on Earth,  _his_ place is living his life, the life Nasch wishes with all his heart – he laughs inwardly at the thought – that he could have had with _him_.

“You loved my son. You  _love_  my son. Don’t you, Ryoga?”

Everyone loved  _him_. Everyone still does. Why should his feelings be any more valid than any of theirs?

“He’s… he  _was_  my best friend.” The words feel strange, hollow, as if he’s trying to convince himself that he had let go of that attachment; that he had actually succeeded in shedding himself of Ryoga Kamishiro and severing the steel chains that bound him to  _him_.

He hasn’t.

“He still is.”

“No, I have new friends.” He thinks about this for a moment and remembers fighting alongside  _them_ , fighting with Merag and Durbe and Mizael and Alit and Gilag (he tries not to think of Vector). They were his friends first, weren’t they? “Rather, I have regained my old friends.”

“But you still hold onto him. I can see it.”

There’s that look in Kazuma’s eyes, that same look that always filled  _his_  eyes when they argued or when  _he_ worried about him. And it makes Nasch angry. What right does he have to give him a physical reminder of what he’ll never have again?

“He has his life to live,” Nasch says, tearing his eyes away.

He thinks about the ring he gave  _him_. Will he lose it someday? Will he take it off and forget to put it back on? Will it lie forgotten in a drawer somewhere, rusting slowly until it eventually crumbles to pieces?

Will  _his_ memories of Ryoga Kamishiro rust away the same way, rust away the circle that supposedly represents a love for eternity?

_I’ll never forget you_.

But  _he_  will, won’t he?

Nasch won’t.

“I didn’t get to talk to him much during our brief reunion,” Kazuma says, placing a hand on a crystal. “But he told me about you. How he wasn’t going to rest until he had his Shark back. He loved you too, you know. More than I think you know.”

Maybe in another life, he would be having a different conversation with Kazuma. One that involved him nervously clenching  _his_  hand as he tried to explain that  _I really like your son and I promise I will never hurt him_  and praying that Kazuma would just smile and clap him on the shoulder and make an overprotective dad threat like  _I’ll bind and gag you and throw you in the trunk and dump you off in a forest thirty miles outside of town in your underwear with only an onion to eat if you do hurt him_ -

-but this was reality, and that scenario can only play out in his head, along with the scenarios of what kinds of things he could do with  _him_  if Fate had given them that chance.

Besides, he  _had_ hurt him.

“You’ll see him again, you know.”

This hurts more than anything, because now that the worlds are connected again, this is where  _he’ll_  go when he dies.

"Don’t you miss him? He’s your son."

"Of course I do. But I’m proud of him, and I know he’ll do good in the world. And when I see him again, I know he’ll be glad to see me."

“When we see him again, it might be sixty years from now. In the meantime, he’ll make new friends, he’ll fall in love, he’ll get married and have children and as he grows older and his children have children, he’ll remember you because you’re his father, but he’ll forget about me. I’ll be a distant memory, one lurking just out of sight in the back of his memory.”

"He won’t forget you."

"Friendships change over time. We might not have kept…" His shoulders slump.  _We might not have kept being friends. I might have gone off to school somewhere and we might have parted ways and never spoken again._

Kazuma understands his fear. “But you wouldn’t forget him. You won’t forget him.”

How can he, when his afterlife is stagnant and he has eternity to mull on the infinite possibilities of what he could have had?

“I told him once that I’d remember him.” They hadn’t been friends back then. How incredible  _his_  spirit, that he could change Ryoga Kamishiro so much in so short a time. “It’s impossible to forget Yuma Tsukumo.”


End file.
